The move stirred something up.
Not just logistically (though there was plenty of that). I mean the kind of stirring that happens when you're forced to sit still long enough to actually think.
Where am I going next? What do I actually want? Would I move overseas someday? How do I reach my goals? Where is my person? How do I get better?
It’s as if all the unanswered questions I was moving too fast to hear suddenly got very loud.
A move does that. It puts you in a pause — intentionally or not. And in that pause, you see everything you've built, everything you've been working toward, and everything that's still unfinished. It can feel disorienting. It can feel like standing still when you're used to moving.
But then I sat down to work.
In my last home, I had a spare bedroom with I used as my office and created the classic separation of work and life. What I didn't realize until now is that I set that space up when I was still in my corporate career. Back when my work belonged in a room I could leave.
When I started my business, I started to hate working in that room. I’d always take my computer to my couch, bed, floor, patio, anywhere but that dark separated space.
In my new home, my desk is in the living room. Right in the middle of everything with floor to ceiling windows. Integrated into my daily life in a way that would have felt wrong before. And it feels exactly right here.
This week I got back to work in a real way, caught up with all my people, aligned to new priorities and made things happen as I do. New environments enable new energy, and I am harnessing that.
This week, while in the midst of harnessing said energy in my workspace, a client asked me: What does a typical founder schedule look like? What should our routine be?
My answer: whatever makes you feel good.
Your business exists for you. You created it for you. And I don't mean that in a selfish way — because a business built with real purpose and intention is naturally going to serve others. But as the founder, as the steward of that business, your primary job is to make sure you are okay. So you can lead with clarity, show up with conviction, and use your gifts in the way only you can.
There is no standard template for this. There is no typical. And I will never stop reminding people that most of the rules we think we're supposed to follow are made up. Entrepreneurship is a personal development journey precisely because sometimes we think we know what we want — and then we go build it and discover we wanted something else entirely.
I've been there. I bought a home because I thought I wanted the milestone. I climbed a corporate ladder because I thought I wanted the success. What I actually wanted was security. Safety. The feeling that I would always be okay.
What I've found as an entrepreneur is that I can create that myself — by living inside my gifts. And what I actually want isn't a title or a milestone. It's connection. Support. Partners who want to pursue this with similar intention.
If you take nothing else from this: what you're building is for you. Not for an audience, not for a standard, not for whoever taught you what success was supposed to look like.
There's no glory in martyrdom. Suffering, sacrificing, burning yourself to the ground for a version of success that doesn't even belong to you — that's not the goal. The goal is to build something that serves you so fully that you can't help but show up and serve everyone else with everything you have.
The most important thing you can do as a founder is stay connected to yourself. Know why you want what you want. Be willing to change. Be willing to grow.
Because that's really what all of this is about. We're growing as people. Growing businesses. Growing teams. Growing into ourselves.
And that’s more than enough. It’s kind of the whole thing.
TTYL
Love, Jaz